Cheap flights and the three-hour tarmac delay rule

Is the three-hour tarmac rule working?

In 2009, there was a remarkable incident at Minnesota's Rochdale International Airport when forty-seven people were held against their will on an airplane without properly working toilets for seven hours. During this time, they were in sight of the airport's buildings, but the airport staff refused to open a gate. This was the straw that broke the Department of Transport's back and it introduced the now popular three-hour rule. The intention is to force airlines and airport operators to treat passengers with basic decency.

 

If a US or foreign airplane on a domestic flight is held on the tarmac for more than two hours, the airline must provide adequate food and drinking water. If the delay is more than three hours, the airline must allow the passengers to leave the airplane. This timetable is shortened if there's a medical emergency or the toilets cease to work. Except, you can only leave the airplane at a formal gate. It's not safe or practical to have you jump or slide down on to the tarmac in the middle of the runway system. This puts significant pressure on the airport operator to make gates available as the time limit approaches. If the airlines breach the rules, there's a federal fine of up to $27,500 per passenger affected. As to international flights, all airlines must publish their rules about tarmac delays which cannot exceed four hours, and breach of these rules will also produce fines.

 

There are other issues addressed under the rules. For example, some take-off slots are at very congested times and, even a few minutes delay at the gate can mean the slot is lost and the flight must be rescheduled. If this happens consistently at one or more slot times, every flight will be treated as cancelled and the airlines fined for deceptive practices. Airlines must also nominate identified individuals to communicate with passengers on a timely basis, and cannot seek to exclude liability in the terms and conditions, particularly on cheap flights. There have been increases in the number of flights cancelled and the number of slots has been rationalized at some crowded airports. So this has represented an improvement both passengers on both full-price and cheap flights.

 

Carisoprodol and other drugs show up in waste water

Human being are giant food processors. We take in food and liquids at the top and, some time later, we dispose of what's left of the food and liquids at the other end. This may not be the most exciting reality to think about but, unless we do start thinking about its implications for our drinking water, we could end up in a lot of trouble. You might have noticed a change in the weather recently. For these purposes, it doesn't matter who or what's responsible, simply register that we have drought conditions in many parts of the country.

This means we're increasingly reliant on our rivers for drinking water. As and when it rains consistently, the reservoirs will no doubt fill up again. Until then, we're into the recycling business. We draw in water upstream of our towns and cities, and pump out the treated effluent downstream. Unfortunately, one town's downstream is another town's upstream. So the theory says our drinking water will be purified before it gets piped to our faucets. The practical reality is that all the water is cleansed of the bad bacteria that comes from human waste. To that extent, the water is safe to drink. But the treatment plants can't take out everything that might be harmful.

As a nation, we consume a vast amount of drugs. Many also have the habit of flushing away unwanted drugs. Add to this emerging evidence that drug manufacturing plants are not self-contained and also pump some drugs into the local rivers. The result is a major cocktail of drugs recycling in our drinking water. In a study published by researchers in New York in 2010, there were regular test samples taken from three waste water treatment plants in New York. This water was analyzed for the presence of opiates and muscle relaxants like Carisoprodol. In the second part of the study, samples were taken nationally to give a comparison. The results show higher than expected levels of Carisoprodol and other drugs affecting humans. But the concentrations were up to 1,000 higher in the treatment plants close to the manufacturing facilities.

To the question of hair hygiene and Propecia

In fact plenty of people siffer from hair loss problems of different kinds. It can be a little bald spot or a progressive baldness of the entire scalp. Problems like these don't have a crucial impact on one's health in any way but they sure affect the person's looks, which are a crucial element of a person's psyche. As a result, hair loss can trigger different kinds of psychological issues starting with socialization problems to clinical depression. Things get so aggravated because hair loss is often seen as a sign of poor health, although it isn't necessarily so, and because it is actually hard to stop or reverse the process, but the FDA approved drug Propecia has the consisiten record of reduced hair loss and a degree of hair regrowth in a few men. Moreover, hair care product makers also add insult to damage and target many of their products on hair loss patients, stating that their new shampoo or balm can stop hair loss. But, despite the widespread belief, hair loss is not about poor hair hygiene.

When it comes to hygiene, there's no denying the fact that it is very important for your health. Many serious diseases can be prevented by simply following some basic rules of hygiene. Hair hygiene also plays a very important role since it affects the condition of hair in general and can seriously decrease the attractiveness of the person if not applied. Still, in order to make hygiene such a problem that would trigger hair loss one would need to seriously forget about any kind of care for an extended period of time. Simply put, your hair won't start falling out just because you didn't wash it for a long period of time or didn't use the right shampoo. It will simply become greasy, smelly and maybe more fragile. But it certainly won't trigger baldness if you somehow disregard hygiene for a period of time.

Now, when it comes to special products advertised by manufacturers as having the possibility to prevent hair loss, it is very important to know how hair loss is triggered in the first place. It is usually caused by a buildup of a specific hormone in the bloodstream, which at a certain point starts shrinking hair follicles and lowering natural hair growth rates. So, any kind of external balms or vitamin-containing shampoos won't do much to stop hair loss since they don't address the primary reason for the issue. Sure, your hair will look very nice and may become thicker, which will conceal the problem in a way. But for real results you need real treatments, including such potent drugs as Propecia. And it takes a doctor to decide what's the best solution, not a shampoo manufacturer.